Forever
by Feygan
Summary: Tuck Everlasting. Winnie drank from the spring, and eighty-four years later she is regretting her choice. Completed July 2003.


Title: Forever  
Author: Feygan  
Fandom: Tuck Everlasting movie  
Pairings: Jesse/Winnie  
Disclaimer: I don't make any claim to the characters or the world they dwell in. Watch the movie and give us back some fic.  
LiveJournal: .com  
Contact:

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NOTE: an AU continuation of Tuck Everlasting. Instead of leaving the spring and going on with her life, Winnie took a drink. And instead of waiting eighty years to come back, Jesse came back a year later to get Winnie.

Winnie: 1899-1999 in the movie.

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Years of staying up late dancing, drinking and making love had long since lost its thrill. Being fifteen forever was not the exciting adventure she had thought it was going to be back when she really was fifteen. Now that she had had a chance to think and grow bored with everything she had done a million times before, all she wanted was to go back in time and take back that one drink of spring water.

Sometimes she tried to kill herself in various ways, just for the thrill of the thought that someday it might actually work and she wouldn't wake up. One night she drank bottle after bottle of Jack Daniels, trying to drown her blood in alcohol. After she finished throwing up the next day, the only ill affects she had left to face were a vaguely upset stomach and a quickly fading headache.

It was anger at her inability to die that had forced her to leave Jesse. Some part of her still loved him, but most of her was resentful of all he had taken away from her with the selfishness he called love. It was his fault she was going to live forever.

For a hundred and fifty years they had lived together, traveling around the world seeing all there was to see, until their last fight. She had just had enough of him, and she didn't regret leaving him to break out on her own. She needed to find her own way without him hanging off of her like a lovesick idiot. She didn't need him anymore, and he had to realize it now before it was too late and she did something terrible to him--

...like encasing him in concrete and burying him alive and leaving him there for a thousand years or forever to silently scream and scream without being able to die...

--that she wouldn't be able to take back.

Even though she thought she hated him, a part of her would always remember Jesse as being her first love. He had been the first person to ever make her heart beat fast and her breath come quick. He had been her first kiss, her first fuck, her first nearly everything. And even though she didn't want him to be her last or her forever, she didn't want to hurt him, not really, not all the time. So she left him, said her good-byes and walked out the door without a single glance back.

Now she was here, wherever here was, wandering through a crowd of happy people, feeling so out of place that she didn't know what she was really doing.

She had dressed up in black leather pants and a shear blue midriff top that turned her nipples into dark shadows and showed off the silver ring in her bellybutton. She had dyed silvery-blue streaks into her hair and wore it loose down her back with a crown of braided black roses holding it back from her forehead, the occasional thorn scratching deliciously against her scalp and the fragile skin above her right eyebrow, the slight pain fading even as it appeared. Silver glitter dusted her still freckled cheeks, and blue eyeshadow added depth to her eyes. Lipstick made her rather thin lips fuller, the glossy black gleaming with hidden light. She was as pretty as a forever-fifteen year old girl could be. She had never been given the chance to grow into beauty, had been trapped forever into awkwardness.

The club was dark and the music was loud, and even with sweaty bodies undulating around her, she still felt separate from it all. These people were going to grow old and die, they were changing with every moment that passed, while she was always the same.

She was tired of it all and there was nothing she could do about it. Immortality was her curse.

Burying her rage beneath a surface of mindless pleasure, she began to sway her hips to the rhythm pounding through the room. She half-closed her eyes and forced herself into a state of mind that would accept such things as mindless pleasure and a false sense of youthful freedom.

She had gotten pretty good at pretending to be as young and carefree as she looked. No one would ever think that she was anything other than what she was forced to pretend to be.

Hands slid against her back as she danced. She didn't bother to turn around and look at the people brushing against her in the flashing dark. They would all be young and brainlessly attractive, the center of their world the sensual frenzy of the music around them. Their touching her had nothing to do with her appeal and everything to do with going along with the moment. They were lost in the haze. She wished she could be one of them.

She threw herself into a writhing dance that was pure body. She didn't want to think and feel, she just wanted to exist.

With her arms raised above her head, she felt her mouth stretch in a blazing smile as her eyes shot out sparks of light. Decades of practice allowed her to put on a false sense of bliss. Her compassion had forced her to lie to Jesse, to never let him know how unhappy she had become, not until all of her anger and pain had just burst out of her. He had been honestly surprised at her sudden, shouted cruelty. He had really thought she was happy to be with him forever.

Done with lying, Winnie let go of such outdated notions as faithfulness and love. Living forever had burned them out of her.

She was here to have fun, and who cared about anyone else?

Grinding her pelvis against a willing ass, she arched her shoulders back, liking the feel of her breasts brushing against the gliding hands of strangers. Fingers twisting her nipples made her purr deep in her throat.

Her old self, pre-immortality, would have been shocked and appalled at her behavior. She had liked to pretend that she was a bit of a rebel, but really she was about as nineteenth-century as her mother. But being a teenager forever had pretty much forced her to change and learn to accept the way things had to be.

She was never going to grow old. She wasn't ever going to be an adult in body as well as mind. No one would ever look at her and see a woman--she was always going to be a girl. So she figured she might as well enjoy it as much as she could.

The real world had nothing to do with her. She could do whatever she wanted. She was never going to die.

Winnie swayed her arms above her head, turning in a perfect circle. Bodies closed in tight around her and it was nice. Warm human bodies, smelling of alcohol, sugar, perfume, deodorant, and the strange sweat-tang of young adults on drugs. It was everything she needed right now.

"My name's Seth. Come back to my place with me, baby," a raspy voice said into her ear. He was trying to sound older, more masculine than he probably was.

She turned and looked at the guy. He was tall and lean with brownish-blond hair that curled around his ears. His face was almost pretty, though his nose was a little too sharp. He was undeniably male, but there was definitely something a bit effeminate about him. He was about nineteen years old, but the overpowering stench of whiskey on his breath said he'd been really putting the drinks away tonight.

He was good looking, but Winnie instinctively backed away. "I don't think so."

There was a flash of disappointment in his eyes, but he didn't lose his smile. He just drifted off into the crowd, searching for more amenable prey. He _was_ going to get laid tonight, and it didn't matter that he'd been turned down by a barely pretty girl. She was too skinny anyway, though her face still had traces of baby fat. He would find someone better.

Winnie watched him go and didn't quite know why she had turned him down. The whole reason she was here tonight was to find a convenient man. She needed sex to make herself forget the troubles of her life, and it wasn't like anyone or anything could hurt her.

Being able to live hard, that was one of the perks of immortality. She could do whatever she wanted to her body, and nothing could hurt her. Tomorrow she would be as healthy as she had always been. There was no fear of consequences after abusing her body as long as she wanted.

As the troubles in their relationship had begun to heat up, she and Jesse would go on week long binges in an attempt to spend time with each other. Like snorting cocaine, sharing a dozen bottles of vodka, playing Russian Roulette with a revolver loaded with three bullets, and drag racing with gang members were really going to bring them closer together.

Their attempts to save their relationship had been ridiculously juvenile, and there was no way they ever could have worked their problems out. They had just been physically too young to ever make their marriage last, no matter how old they were mentally. And Winnie was tired of trying. She was tired of _Jesse_.

With a huff of breath, she forced her mind from thoughts of Jesse. She didn't want to think about him now, and maybe not ever.

Seeing what she was looking for, she wormed through the crowd until she reached the side of her prey. Wrapping her arms around the young black man, she gave him her most charming smile.

He looked surprised for a moment, then pleased. "Hey," he said intelligently.

"Hey," she said back. "I'm Winnie."

"Gray."

"Wanna go away somewhere else? Somewhere a little more private?" She quirked an eyebrow suggestively.

His black eyes flashed. "Sure, wherever you want to go, and whatever you want to do. Just nothing too freaky."

"Don't worry," Winnie said. "I don't do freaky. I do _fun_."

He grinned, white teeth flashing.

With her arm around his waist, she let the man lead her toward the exit. There was a pleasant warmth in her lower belly and she knew what was going to happen when they left. She could almost taste the sex. It was wonderful.

It was as she was walking out the door that she realized why she had been so put off by Seth. There were differences, but he had looked a lot like Jesse--same build and a face that was remarkably similar to her husband's. And maybe he was just as much of a liar too; she refused to take that chance.

She was tired of love. It hurt too much when it all fell apart. She would focus instead on fun.

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=THE END=


End file.
